3D animation of Lake Pedder restoration plan released in Hobart

ELEANOR HALL: Environmentalists are renewing their push for the restoration of Lake Pedder in Tasmania's south-west.

The Lake was flooded 40 years ago to make way for the state's largest hydroelectricity scheme but its pink granite beach still exists.

Those who support draining the new Lake Pedder say it can be done without cruelling electricity production.

As Felicity Ogilvie reports from Hobart.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The original Lake Pedder was an alpine lake in a national park surrounded by mountains with a large pink-coloured beach.

Ninety-nine-year-old artist Max Angus has never forgotten what the original Lake Pedder looks like.

He's still painting watercolours of the lake that now lies under about 13 metres of water.

MAX ANGUS: If you can imagine a beach two miles long, by about 800 metres wide in the summer time, at 940 feet above sea level and ringed by mountains, you'd think that was pretty different from anything, any other beach that you could think of.

I've got a little bottle, matter of fact - that's the pink.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The flooding of Lake Pedder in the early 1970s sparked mass protests and the formation of the world's first Greens party, but it didn't stop the dam.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: At the moment we're excavating the Gordon Dam.

The tiny Lake Pedder is nothing; we're giving you a far bigger, better lake for the use of everybody.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Forty years on, Peter Fagan from the Pedder Restoration Committee is reigniting the debate by launching a 3D animation showing how the new Lake Pedder could be drained.

PETER FAGAN: We want people to look at the Pedder issue with fresh eyes. We want them to realise that reconfiguration is possible and practical.

The other thing is we want them to capture in their own mind some of the excitement of what would happen if Lake Pedder was restored.

The current Lake Pedder is part of Tasmania's largest hydroelectric scheme and provides about 14 per cent of the state's energy.

Andrew Scanlon from Hydro Tasmania says it'd take major engineering works to divert water from a drained Lake Pedder into the power scheme.

ANDREW SCANLON: It would involve canals and pumps to get some of the water from Pedder into the Gordon.

Pedder itself provides about a bit over 40 per cent of the water that goes to the Gordon power station.

FELICITY OGILVIE: So if you did have a pump, would it be possible to drain enough of Lake Pedder to expose the old lake and yet still only see power generation drop by about 15 per cent?

ANDREW SCANLON: I don't know the detail of the proposal, but if you wanted to restore Lake Pedder, you're dealing with a major project and you would have to, if you wanted to get more of the water into Gordon from Pedder after the lake's been removed, you would have to have pipelines and pumping stations and things like that.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Peter Fagan estimates that it'd cost $100 million to build a pipeline to pump the reduced amount of water to the Pedder/Gordon power station.

He thinks that the total amount of electricity generated by the hydro plant would be reduced by 15-20 per cent.

PETER FAGAN: At the moment, the new Lake Pedder, all it does is it lifts the water of the Serpentine and the Huon to a higher level, so that they flow by gravity into Lake Gordon.

The tunnel would be cut through the mountain range to pump the water - or let the water fall by gravity - into Lake Gordon.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Hobart artist, Max Angus, believes the old Lake Pedder would be a popular new attraction.

MAX ANGUS: Its situation is so remarkable that people would flock. I mean, they flock to Cradle Reserve, don't they? Well, with Pedder, you've got this same combination on a gigantic scale.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The 3D animation of the draining of Lake Pedder has been played at the Museum of New and Old Art in Hobart.

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